THE PEOPLE'S FORUM
THE PEOPLE'S FORUM 'Hitler in New York* Dear Sirs: While reading the article by David Mc-Reynolds, "Hitler in New York," in your December issue, I was obliged several times to look at the cover...
...7. This should be the Great Debate in America, but it has hardly begun...
...After the articles by Governor Meyner and Senator Young in The Progressive, an article by Holifield seems in order...
...We are happy to report that the January article on Deerfield in The Progressive, along with news of the court victory, has been reprinted as a public service by Turnpike Press, Annandale, Virginia...
...He says he does not favor nuclear war but "wants people to be more level-headed about its appropriateness and aptness in some circumstances...
...The case is also pending in the state courts, where condemnation took place...
...Many people have built fallout shelters, but they fear public ridicule if they talk about them...
...Senator Young is dreadfully right on some of his details...
...May I through your columns suggest to peace-minded individuals and to organizations working in the field of peace that they make protests against current civil defense programs a major part of their activity this year...
...Of course newspapers and magazines influence large numbers of people to their way of thinking...
...Too many languid liberals today seem not to know that progressive democracy, in its finest form, must always provide a forum for the opinion we hate...
...Let the people accept the proposed crash shelter building program and to a large extent, as Harrison Brown has pointed out, the idea that war in the nuclear age is obsolete—cannot and must not happen—will be undermined...
...Wonderful Progressive Dear Sirs: I subscribe to approximately twenty journals, including The Nation, New Republic, I. F. Stone's Weekly, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and the like...
...Walter W. Haines Pomona, N.Y...
...Red China's president, we are told, said as much in a speech in Russia interpreted foT us as indicating ratification by the Communist summit conference of the Soviet policy Chairman Khrushchev is peddling...
...If Communists were to incite people to overthrow the government by violence, they would be arrested...
...Kahn's lectures on two separate occasions, the second time at my own request...
...I do not worry about, I worry for it and with it...
...It is reasonably apparent they exposed the country and some of our citizens to great dangers, without in any way increasing the likelihood of peace...
...Victory for MCD Dear Sirs: Readers of Marvin Weisbord's excellent article on Deerfield in the January Progressive will be interested to know that the U.S...
...To permit Rockwell and his sadistic followers to preach their, evil doctrine is equivalent to allowing an outbreak of bubonic plague to spread after spotting the first case...
...He would allow "free speech" to a preacher of gas chambers and poisoning, to an advocate of Eichmann's theories and practices, to a rekindler of Heinrich Himmler, Goebbels, and Hitler...
...McReynolds is full of wishful thinking...
...Santa Cruz, Calif...
...But if that number were dwindled down to one, you can be sure that last one would be the wonderful Progressive...
...This is but one example, I admit, of the many excellent articles and features of The Progressive which make it, in my opinion, a most suitable gift for one's discriminating friends...
...I have very carefully read Kahn's book...
...Let the devil take care of his own...
...a good many civil defense programs have been badly planned, there has been some deliberate waste and much confusion, but in large measure this has resulted from an absence of national leadership, and because without direction state governments have often treated civil defense as a patronage agency...
...I urge all persons to read it and particularly those who are involved in the formulation of policy at the national level and who are responsible for the transformation of that policy into action...
...Mills is aware of difficulties, nor does he slight the passion of Cuban people for freedom...
...Dr...
...But for greatest impact on mind and heart, I vote for Milton Mayer...
...It is so easy to let a gutter demagogue like George Rockwell trap us into betraying what is best in the American tradition...
...2. Experience has shown that civil defense protest is a cause in which popular support can be enlisted...
...by Melvin Martin, in your December issue, was absurd...
...6. Therefore, America must change its behavior drastically and soon...
...Boosted as a deterrent to war, non-military defense may well be the main cause of war...
...Let me assert that neither Brown nor Kahn require either support or clarification by me...
...It is amazing that a citizen of David McReynolds' background, and an organization with the history of the American Civil Liberties Union, should be in favor of allowing American Nazis the right to propagate the monstrous evil which destroyed normal life in the world for nearly six years and caused the death and mutilation of millions of men, women, and children as well as colossal destruction of property...
...We need constantly to remind ourselves that freedom is indivisible...
...Mills has a program...
...It won't be as bad as it is pictured by some, if it occurs in the next three years, but after that time the progress of technology may create a much bigger and worse war...
...The author of this comment: Harrison S. Brown...
...I would have slipped through that discussion and on to the next had you not brought me up short with this remark: "In the face of this fantastic destructive power, there is a growing drive, particularly among military men, and notably on the part of The Rand Corporation's Herman Kahn, to create a psychology which would accept the idea that a large scale nuclear war was a distinct possibility, but that the nation could survive and rebuild itself on the ashes of seventy-five to a hundred million dead, and an utterly devastated landscape...
...The race hatred of the Nazis is in itself an incitement to murder, for Rockwell and his ilk are justifying all the horrible crimes against humanity perpetrated by Hitler and his Nazi followers...
...The article proved rather weakly that the California papers distorted the facts, but it doesn't really matter...
...Jacob J. Leibson Halcott Center, N.Y...
...He refers to Rockwell as a "mind so sick and perverted...
...Cuba is an excellent case in point...
...However, the main purpose of this letter is to stir people and organizations to think and act largely on their own without waiting for stimulation or directives...
...Patrick J. Doyle Riverside, Calif...
...No man should have the legal right to advocate race hatred and genocide...
...I hope the reprints will sell by the hundreds of thousands...
...Eugene b. Lewis Nashville, Tenn...
...Too Late for War Dear Sirs: Congratulations to Senator Stephen Young and The Progressive for bringing to the at-tension of the public the hypocrisy of civil defense...
...As Mr...
...As a corollary to the reasoning of David McReynolds, we should do away with all laws against the use and sale of narcotics, because they interfere with the freedom of the "pursuit of happiness...
...It might harden into any one of several kinds of dictatorial tyranny...
...Paul Stein Alexandria, Va...
...Too easily the reader is carried away by the dramatic and terrible story of Nazism and fails to note the absence of an adequate framework of reference to historical background and contemporary European and world problems, and is content with the usual too-facile comments on the German personality...
...McReynolds pointed out so well, to refuse this pint-size Hitler a chance to talk only attracts more attention to him and strengthens his following...
...If Chessman was not guilty the article should have proved this by evidence, rather than implied it by insinuations...
...I am for the Cuban revolution...
...1. Defense Department spokesmen and the scientists who are the braintrusters for the Department are entirely frank in disclosing that a civil defense program is an integral part of cold-war strategy and of the policy of "deterrence" by massive retaliation...
...Fred Feld Newark, N. J. Dear Sirs: I was glad to see David McReynolds' much-needed article on "Hitler in New York...
...The Civil Defense Protest Committee in New York City which sparked the mass demonstration in City Hall Park in connection with Operation Alert last May continues to function at Room 825, 5 Beekman Street, New York 38, New York...
...The best informed scientists knew it, but their warnings were disregarded, not understood...
...The article says, in effect, that the California papers should have put pressure on the governor to parole a convicted kidnapper and sex pervert who had been paroled five times previously...
...Dear Sirs: David McReynolds has ably presented the official position of the ACLU in defense of free speech for even those who, by their appeal to bigotry, fear, and ignorance, arouse racial hatred and incite to violence...
...Had Hitler and his cohorts been "mobbed," so to speak, and actually killed in the early Twenties, would not the world be better off, despite the lack of "civil liberty" spirit in the mobbers...
...5. America's Open Door policy in this century has worked to quarantine or crush revolution, and has failed to produce the needed development among the hungry peoples...
...It is hard to say which policy is worse, from the Free World's standpoint . . . "What makes the peaceful co-existence policy more dangerous to the West than the outright bellicosity of the Red Chinese is the danger that it will lull the Free World into a false sense of security and cause us to lower our guard . . ." I can assure you this editorial was not written with tongue in cheek...
...Anybody who fights for Rockwell's civil liberties is himself suborning murder and the gas chamber...
...Chessman and the Press Dear Sirs: "Did the Press Kill Caryl Chessman...
...Whatever good there may be in the intentions of ACLU, its judgment is extremely bad...
...The facts were brought out at Chessman's trial, where the jury, not the newspapers, found him guilty...
...Young's 'Half-Truths' Dear Sirs With reference to Senator Stephen Young's article on civil defense in your December issue, please recall the position of many who called themselves "progressives" in 1935-40, and opposed the rearmament of the United States, the fortification of Guam, and similar measures...
...Eunice B. Armstrong Scarborough-on-Hudson, N.Y...
...Protest Civil Defense Dear Sirs: One of the most timely and helpful of the many services The Progressive has rendered in recent years was the publication of Senator Young's blistering article, "Civil Defense: Billion Dollar Boondogle," in your December issue...
...Fortunately there are those, like McReynolds and the ACLU, who do not temper their zeal for liberty by considerations of the individual's political views, popularity, liberality, or past criminal record...
...For twenty or forty or sixty per cent of a nation's people to die willingly and knowingly for whatever they consider to be their national purpose is one thing...
...In these distressing times when the number of mentally ill is increasing at an alarming rate, the preaching of hate may have disastrous consequences...
...There is an immense amount of suspicion about the whole business in people's minds...
...Enlighten the people, for only the people can change the course of history...
...Although I realize that many persons will not agree with Kahn's thesis, I urge that they read what he has to say before they pass judgment...
...Jacob Wurtz Seattle, Wash...
...Amrom H. Katz Los Angeles, Calif...
...Walter Gormly Mt...
...What would Mr...
...And I do believe that should it happen it would be due, in very large part, to the role of government of the United States has been and is continuing to play in Cuban affairs...
...War is a denial of those principles, for war is always accompanied by secrecy, fear, prejudice, misinformation, and unreason...
...3. The behavior of the overdeveloped societies toward these revolutions will make a big difference in the kind of emerging new societies, especially in the liberties which the average man will enjoy...
...As long as there is not enough money to defend properly those who preach love, why should there be any to encourage those who would spew hate...
...unless it exists for all, it is safe for none...
...Judge Perry's contention that MCD and its subsidiary, Progress, came into court with unclean hands because we would not sell all our houses to whites or all to Negroes, was thrown out, as was his contention that MCD was an unregistered investment company...
...Kahn says he would not presume, because of his ignorance and incompetence, to describe the aims of the United States, nor would he presume to decide what the failure to achieve these aims would result in...
...John Boardman Syracuse, N. Y. Dear Sirs: Where but in The Progressive could one find so deeply perceptive and boldly courageous an article as David McReynolds' "Hitler in New York...
...THE PEOPLE'S FORUM 'Hitler in New York* Dear Sirs: While reading the article by David Mc-Reynolds, "Hitler in New York," in your December issue, I was obliged several times to look at the cover to make sure that I was reading The Progressive...
...No issue of civil liberties is involved in suppressing Nazi activities in this country...
...He is right, unfortunately, in suggesting that too often there is no greater intolerance than that of the ardent liberal...
...Civil defense is at present schizophrenic, and it may be graft-ridden, because it has been boycotted by common-sensical people...
...2. They are initiating rapid changes by a variety of revolutions...
...The lectures and the book have done more to stimulate constructive thought on my part than anything that has happened since the end of World War II...
...A. C. Thorn Montreal, Canada Dear Sirs: Your publication of David McReynolds" "Hitler in New York" shows The Progressive and progressivism at their fullest flower...
...In many instances they had been advocates of peace, justice, brotherhood...
...Confirmation comes from an editorial in the Cedar Rapids Gazette, December 6, I960, entitled "Greater of Two Evils": "Communists evidently would have us believe that the policy of peaceful co-existence has won out over the policy of revolution by war...
...Instead, it may be calculated that when a required percentage of the population and supplies are truly protected, and the rest of the people are duped into thinking they are among the protected, then brinkmanship can be practiced, and pre-emptive war, a euphemism for preventive war, can be waged...
...However, as Harrison Brown's and James Real's The Community of Fear demonstrates, the deadly importance of civil defense should not be underestimated...
...McReynolds and the ACLU are carrying the principle of free speech to absurdity, as though the neo-Nazis were merely harmless crackpots...
...Public fallout shelters are the democratic solution to defense, but because they are not forthcoming, I will build my own...
...quantities are available at nominal prices...
...Dear Sirs: Apparently David McReynolds has not learned the "fact of life" that to incite people to hatred of his fellowman is not an exercise of "freedom of speech" but an abuse of it, with sad historical consequences...
...Shirley Salter Evanston, 111...
...What must we do...
...4. To deny these revolutions, or to oppose their major goals, will be politically catastrophic for the overdeveloped societies, and a tragedy for liberty everywhere...
...The reference to the freedom allowed to Communists misses the point...
...And he answers, "Clearly, no...
...As I see it, it is this: 1. The world's hungry peoples will be hungry no longer...
...He says he is a strategist and this is not his business...
...Vote for Mayer Dear Sirs: The January issue is a most auspicious entrance into a new year by The Progressive...
...Gerhard Rehder West Roxbury, Mass...
...To fight for our own rights is, indeed, worthy, but it must by the nature of the case involve a certain amount of self-seeking...
...In almost every mail I receive requests for financial aid to defend people whose civil rights have been endangered or violated...
...Dear Sirs: In introducing a review of The Community of Fear (Notes in the News, December, 1960) The Progressive says war may be thinkable—to some people...
...Short of clear and present danger, which this Rockwell boob is not, there can be no justification for denial of free speech in a democracy like ours...
...This government was founded on the principle that men, given free speech and a free press, could govern themselves...
...Lewis A. Dexter Belmont, Mass...
...Your policy of printing only articles that are sympathetic to your ideas (as is stated on the inside front cover) makes it obvious that the purpose of The Progressive is to influence by propaganda rather than to inform with facts...
...I will not say you misunderstand Brown, but I think the following quotation will demonstrate that you really misunderstand Kahn...
...A. J. Muste Acting Secretary The Fellowship of Reconciliation New York, N. Y. Civil Defense and Peace Dear Sirs: Senator Young is correct in saying in the December Progressive that a peaceful solution to the world's problems is the only permanent shelter...
...Dear Sirs: Your discussion of Harrison Brown's and James Real's The Community of Fear, in the December "Notes in the News," is by and large well done...
...He chooses to forget that the Nazi movement in the early Twenties was also minimized, that Hitler was imprisoned and later ignored, that his following was infinitesimal in comparison to the votes required to capture Reichstag delegates...
...McReynolds' suggestion that Jews, Negroes, and liberal-minded citizens should have formed a protective guard around Rockwell while he spread his murderous doctrine is the same as preventing doctors from taking action to prevent the spread of a dangerous epidemic...
...Then he asks, "Would free speech lead to gas chambers for the Jews...
...The least The Progressive could do in carrying Senator Young's farrago of half-truths and misrepresentations would be to carry a corresponding article by a student of passive defense and modern war to demonstrate the suicidal triviality and irrelevance to major national policy of most of what Young says...
...The Nazi movement, which has manifested itself during the past few years in the desecration of synagogues, and in such outbursts as Rockwell's, should be handled like any other conspiracy to commit murder...
...In Fallout, edited by John M. Fowler, Congressman Chet Holifield writes, "As unpleasant as the civil defense chore may seem, its purpose is basically to preserve the peace...
...I observe further that there is a considerable section of American liberal opinion which seems to prefer certainty and a vision of complete disaster, of final cataclysm, of unrelieved horror, to one far less severe and not at all certain...
...Circuit Court of Appeals has now reversed Judge Perry's decision on all three counts and sent the historic struggle back to him for a trial of our $750,000 damage claim on the merits...
...whereas a considerable body of scientific testimony suggests that ihe country could survive and recover if it had an adequate shelter program...
...He is very detached and ironic in discussing twenty to sixty million deaths in nuclear war...
...Dear Sirs: The article on Rockwell by David McReynolds is as incomprehensible as it is inconceivable...
...Dear Sirs: "Hitler in New York" by David McReynolds demonstrates, if demonstrations were needed, that The Progressive is holding firmly to the great tradition that distinguishes it from all other publications...
...Vernon, la...
...for that number to be duped, and to think they are protected by Conelrad and civil defense, and then support moves toward a war in which they are written off as necessary losses by the war games experts is quite another...
...Nonetheless we must learn to tolerate the idea...
...The quotation is from the dust jacket of Herman Kahn's book On Thermonuclear War: "I have listened to Mr...
...Kahn made this joke: "It Is possible, isn't it, that parents will learn to love two headed children twice as much...
...Dear Sin: David McReynolds' defense of Rockwell's right to advocate murder is a shocking variation from The Progressive's usual high standards of journalism...
...McReynolds actually believe that a man who preaches "Kill thy neighbor," is merely exercising the right of free speech...
...Most Latin Americans are hungry people...
...The question of whether Rockwell should be allowed to speak in Union Square or anywhere else cannot be argued in a historical vacuum, as if Hitler had never been anything but a similar street-corner ranter, or Dachau merely an industrial town in Bavaria...
...The Community of Fear Dear Sirs: Senator Young's December issue article leaves the impression of a bumbling civil defense that need not be taken seriously except as a big waste of money...
...There are a number of reasons why this is important and strategically sound...
...Marvin J. Naman, MD...
...Kahn says he has "a duty to change the atmosphere toward greater receptivity of the idea of nuclear war...
...Herman Kahn is traveling widely on a speech-making tour sponsored by the General Electric Company, the Rand Corporation, and other institutions and organizations...
...The absence of an effective shelter program may well mean the extermination of the United States and of a high proportion of its citizens...
...If the Social-Democrats of the Weimar Republic of Germany had not been so tolerant of their Rockwell, Hitler, before he started assassinating his opponents, the "facts of history" would have been different...
...Paul F. Albricht Hollydale, Calif...
...R. F. burlingame Milan, Mich...
...It is only when we grant the rights of those with whom we disagree that we really show our devotion to the cause of freedom...
...Ironically enough, the author did not have enough courage to allow the article to appear under his own name, while he accused the governor of California of not having courage to stick by his own convictions...
...Ralph Nelson New York, N. Y. Dear Sirs: David McReynolds admits that Rockwell "threatened to kill," and ordered his troopers "to silence" hecklers...
...Princeton, N. J. Heart of Cuba's Case Dear Sirs: Robert Alexander's January review of C. Wright Mills' Listen, Yankee, however interesting, has not got to the heart of the book...
...Dear Sin: No doubt you know that Dr...
...Single copies are free...
...Benjamin M. Freeman Hartford, Conn...
...But I do not believe that this is at all inevitable in Cuba...
...and in the delicate atmosphere in which it works the results can be very dangerous...
...The nation as a whole may go underground, as described in The Community of Fear, but this will take time and preparation and cooperation from the public...
...Alexander have us do...
...Vera Moore Squires Biloxi, Miss...
...Dear Sirs: The position of the American Civil Liberties Union in the Rockwell case proves again how vigilantly it guards our civil liberties...
...Many advocates of free speech would have muzzled McCarthy if they could...
...The court, as I understand it, instructed Judge Perry to grant our request for an injunction to prevent state condemnation of out two Deerfield sites if the testimony in the trial supported our case...
...It may be in a position to be helpful to inquirers...
...Its stand is all the more admirable because it must have known that its defense of a two-penny demagogue's right to speak would be misunderstood and condemned by the sunshine liberals...
...Does Mr...
...Surely it would be difficult to select a second best article from such a wealth of fine writing...
...Morris Milcram President Modern Community Developers 84 Nassau St...
...He has followers on this earth, even in this country, with plenty of money—some of it oil money...
...Pat Miller Los Altos, Calif...
...It seems to me that the ACLU has put itself in the ludicrous position of asking for contributions to defend the "civil liberties" of a person whose avowed purpose is to deprive others of their civil liberties and even of life itself...
...William Paul Livant University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Michigan Praises Mosse Review Dear Sirs: Along with some gift subscriptions I feel I must comment on the excellent review by Professor George L. Mosse of William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich...
...Not only would six million Jews have been saved from extermination, but millions of others as well, including the Germans slaughtered on the battlefields...
...It will be curious to see what the white citizens councils of Jackson, Mississippi, which have repeatedly backed MCD's opposition in Deerfield, will say about the decision—and to see what Harold Lewis, Bible-quoting segregationist leader of Deerfield, will do now...
...J. J. Waratt Merrick, N.Y...
...Why should we, who believe as these do, spend a cent to defend those who spread hate and promote strife...
...It is by far the most intelligent and thorough of the numerous reviews I have read...
...Herman Kahn advocates a shelter program since with it the government will have more will actually to use nuclear weapons...
...After August 7, 1945, it was too late to prepare for any war...
...This book will influence history more than any which I have read in the last twenty years...
...But nuclear war may come by accident before we have solved many problems...
...8. This is a cause which lends itself to large scale demonstrations, but also one about which virtually anybody from teenager up can do something in his own state legislature, community, school...
...Many fighters for justice for Negroes would like to deny the rights of white Southerners...
Vol. 25 • February 1961 • No. 2
